FROM

By the end of the film, Thorn learns that the oceans
are dead and the actual ingredients of Soylent Green are something a bit
harder to stomach than plankton. In the final scene, a mortally-wounded
Thorn is carried away on a stretcher as he desperately tries to tell
bewildered onlookers, “Soylent Green is People!” “They’re making our food
out of people. Next thing, they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food!”

Could it ever happen? Could the human race ever stoop
so low? If the scenario seems too hard to swallow, consider this: the
conditions animals are forced to endure on today’s factory farms would have
seemed unimaginable to people living a hundred years ago.

Last night I watched the timeless 1973 movie, Soylent Green,
again and was again impressed (unfavorably) by how much the futuristic world
that it depicted mirrored the world we’re headed for now. The temperature of
the overcrowded New York of the future was a constant 90 degrees; the oceans
were dying (presumably from overfishing and pollution, they hadn’t heard of
acidification at the time); and the world was running out of food..

Spoiler Alert:

Set in 2022, the film opens with a slide show of earlier eras, back when
the Earth was covered with forests and open fields, and there were only a
few scattered settlements of people who travelled in horse-drawn wagons.

As the images pass quickly by, we see the first automobiles (tail pipes
spewing toxic climate-changing carbon gases), followed by a massive blacktop
parking lot jam packed with Model Ts. The pictures begin to flash almost
more rapidly than we can focus, but we catch glimpses of factories with
smokestacks billowing and crowds of people barely able to move without
trampling one another. (Come to think of it, what we are witnessing looks a
lot like the inside of an average modern-day poultry barn, where chickens
and turkeys are forced to live out their lives in intense confinement.)

The first scene of action takes place in a cramped little New York City
apartment, the dwelling of the film’s two main characters, Thorn, a
semi-corrupt detective, and his elderly room-mate and research partner, Sol,
who is constantly going on about the good old days—a world that Thorn can’t
possibly envision or relate to.

They are among the lucky few; most people sleep on the stairways or in
the hallways or anywhere they can find shelter from the oppressive heat
caused by an out of control greenhouse effect. We overhear a program on
their worn out old TV which is an interview with the governor of New York,
touting a new food product called “Soylent Green,” ostensibly made from the
ocean’s plankton. (Everyone in that day and age knows that the land is used
up, but they’re told the oceans can still provide for them).

Food in this depressing, human-ravaged world comes in the form of
color-coded wafers, distributed under strict government supervision. Hordes
of people stand in line for their ration of Soylent yellow or blue made from
soy, or other high protein plants grown behind the fortress-walls of heavily
guarded farms.

Signs remind the throng that “Tuesday is Soylent Green day.”

The multitudes are exceptionally unruly on Tuesday. Brimming with
anticipation, they can’t wait to obtain a ration of the special new product.
When the food distributors run out of soylent green, people start rioting
and things get out of hand. “Scoops” (garbage trucks fitted with
backhoe-like buckets on the front) are called in to scrape up the angry
masses and haul them off…

By the end of the film, Thorn learns that the oceans are dead and the
actual ingredients of Soylent Green are something a bit harder to stomach
than plankton. In the final scene, a mortally-wounded Thorn is carried away
on a stretcher as he desperately tries to tell bewildered onlookers,
“Soylent Green is People!” “They’re making our food out of people. Next
thing, they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food!”

Could it ever happen? Could the human race ever stoop so low? If the
scenario seems too hard to swallow, consider this: the conditions animals
are forced to endure on today’s factory farms would have seemed unimaginable
to people living a hundred years ago.

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